


The Universe Has Much More in Store for Ash Lynx

by angelwingsinhell



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Is Alive, Fix-It, Spoilers, i am emotionally drained, miss me with that "ash is dead" bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 12:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17386247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelwingsinhell/pseuds/angelwingsinhell
Summary: !SPOILERS!Since the ending of Banana Fish is technically an open ending as far as I'm concerned, I wrote my own ending of how Ash meets his fate





	The Universe Has Much More in Store for Ash Lynx

He dies. He does. No if’s, ands, or buts, about it, Ash Lynx dies for a full minute and a half.

After reading Eiji’s heartfelt words and rushing to try and make it to the airport to maybe, just maybe, tell him to stay, tell him goodbye, tell him anything to try and make Eiji understand how important he really was to Ash, he gets stabbed by that good-for-nothing ex-gang member, Lao. Lao paid the consequences, of course. Meeting the other end of Ash’s gun didn’t seem to teach him any lesson but, it did shut him up.

After stumbling back to the library, realizing that in his near-death condition, there was no hope of him dragging his wounded body to the airport in time, he plops himself in one of the chairs and skims through the letters again. They really were beautiful. Maybe he was biased but, he’d never experienced such profound feelings from such a simple letter. He knew he was going to die, he’s seemed to use up all of his luck and now the reaper seemed to be closing in on him. It was the best death Ash could have hoped for, honestly. Reading over the letters again and again and again until his eyes got bleary from the blood loss or the tears, he wasn’t sure. The angelic light he saw from the windows made him think that maybe, just maybe, he’d be going to a heaven. Even after all he’d done, all he’d been forced to do, he could have some sort of salvation.

‘Impossible,’ he thought. There was no heaven if Eiji wasn’t there to greet him.

Sooner than he would’ve liked, his head drooped down and his eyes slipped close, passing out from the mixture of blood loss and emotional shock. He wished he could have read through the letter just one more time.

The librarian that passed the sleeping boy was right. He was having a very nice dream indeed.

The woman sitting at the next table over, seemed to disagree. After casually lifting her head to peer at the librarian, the corner of her eye interested in whatever was moving over there, the increasing pool of blood at the blond boy’s feet seemed to alert her that something was terribly, terribly wrong. The scream that echoed through the library startled everyone in the room and they all seemed to swivel their heads at the same time to the boy she was pointing at, not ten feet away.

Chaos ensued. Some people immediately rushed into action, rolling him onto the ground, checking his pulse (incredibly faint, but there), and applying pressure to the wound. Others ran to the staff for help or called an ambulance, ten different frantic voices echoing the same need for help for this wounded stranger. Everything blurred together, the screaming, the people, the ambulance and its flashing red and blue lights.

At the hospital, Max stands at his bedside and hopes that somehow, someway, Ash would make another miracle and pull though, just like he did the last time. It seems improbable, that someone could have so many miracles in such a short amount of time and he worries that Ash’s luck really has run out, that this will be the last time Ash scares him with his near-death experiences. What will he tell Eiji?

“Please,” he whispers,”do it for Eiji at least, come back for Eiji.”

The doctors say the same things last time, technically it wasn’t fatal, but Ash would have to be an incredibly strong person to pull back from this. It would have to be some kind of medical miracle for this weakened boy to be able to survive this much.

And a miracle it is.

Ash wakes up a week later, groggy, disoriented, and confused on how the hell he managed to survive yet again. Max silently cries when he sees Ash’s emerald eyes again, living proof that Ash really is that strong, that lucky. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief at the news that the leopard hasn’t been killed yet. He hasn’t been caught.

Ash doesn’t seem to be that relieved. He had honestly, truly thought that he would die in that library. He would slowly bleed out and slip into whatever afterlife was waiting for him. He had almost wanted it. When Max comes to visit him one night, though, and hands him the pages of Eiji’s letter he had left at the library, he doesn’t really want to see the afterlife as much as he did. He reads the letters dozens and dozens of times again, memorizing not only the words but, the swoops of Eiji’s penmanship, the messy scrawl of someone who isn’t used to writing in english. And he cries a little more. He decides that maybe he can be a little selfish. He wants to live to read Eiji’s letters again. He wants to live to see Eiji again, to visit him in Japan like he promised even if when he promised it, he didn't really mean it because he thought he’d be dead by then.

And he did die. For a full minute and a half, he hears. But the universe has a lot more in store for Ash Lynx than to kill him off for long.

**Author's Note:**

> i am emotionally drained from banana fish and i refuse to believe that Ash dies, that is all


End file.
